Perusing my nearly week’s worth of unread feeds, I came across this article about upcoming efforts to keep Florida Atlantic University’s resident students on campus more. I think this is a step in the right direction for FAU to try and start competing on a higher level for students from other state universities. Charles Brown, FAU’s dean of student affairs (we have a dean for student affairs?! I thought it would have a director not a dean), is working to concoct ways of keeping those resident students residing over the weekend.
As a commuter student and former employee at Boca’s other University, this is going to be a very hard sell. At Lynn University, most resident students stayed for the weekend for entirely different reasons than FAU students may: over 90% of resident students aren’t from Florida. I worked there for almost three years and came face-to-face with students everyday of that time and nearly none of them were actually from Florida, let alone the South Florida area. Many of these students’ parents could easily afford weekly jet flights back home so their kids could jaunt around with their hometown chums but many didn’t because Boca has a number of underage-friendly clubs where it’s easy to party all weekend– the only extracurricular activity a huge portion of these students ever participate in and weekends start on Wednesday night. They figured it was easier to stay in town to get in trouble and have fun, well out of the reach of their parents.
This is the complete opposite of much of FAU’s student body from what I’ve noticed. I’ve encountered a marginal handful of foreign and exchange students and students from other states but the majority are Floridians and most of those are from counties surrounding Palm Beach that didn’t (or couldn’t) go to UF or FSU. With friends and parents only minutes or hours away, many resident students see no reason to stay in town. And I can’t blame them as many of FAU’s student activities are not only poorly advertised but are poorly organized. The most prominent flyers you will see on campus at any given time are for bars and college night specials; I only know this because they’re the highest profile litter on the entire campus much to my dismay. You can’t walk to any class or building without seeing at least a dozen of these things and in that same amount of time, you may see 4 or 5 fliers for student activities. And the bigger problem with student flyers is they have a very low circulation. When I walk from the SO building (social sciences and Jewish studies) to the Breezeway (our campus’s student focal point) for a cup of coffee, I will see flyers for different activities at both buildings but rarely any for the same activity at both buildings. And how hard would it be to distribute them to both buildings? Stupefyingly easy as the buildings are only about 150 feet apart.
This is only part of the problem, the other problem is any actual promotion of events. FAU’s MyFAU portal for both students and faculty members does an extremely poor job of promoting events by both students and the college alike. I get more information on what the college is putting on from fauevents.com (owned by the school) or from the Boca Raton News’ RSS feed than I do from the school’s own internal information portal. Sad, I know. Student events are even less prominent on MyFAU. There’s more information on getting a physical at the school’s clinic than there are about the numerous fashion shows during any given semester. My girlfriend has missed many opportunities to both see and photograph these fashion shows because she never saw any promotion for them, she only found out about them by passing by or by simply hearing the music being played. And this year’s Battle of the Bands? Besides the fact that the bands were complete rubbish, there were more people in bands and playing then there were in attendance and students were walking right past without even giving one moment’s thought to what was going on. We only saw the flyer for the show the day of the show and because we overheard it at the library while researching for one of my papers. I would have been far more apt to attend this free event if I’d known about it, either by more prominently displayed flyers or a blurb on MyFAU.
So now Dean Brown has now set lofty goals for himself and his department. He wants to increase visibility for events in order to keep current students and recruit future students. Some of this will definitely be helped by FAU’s football team being the only Florida university to win a bowl game this year so weekend football attendance will definitely increase. But what about other activities? Since he’s the head of student affairs, he always has a throng of students working for him to help promote student activities so how is he going to make up for this apparent past failure? I’m not sure but I know that at Lynn, most students knew exactly what was going on during the week and weekend because of the student activities department. I worked with those guys quite frequently and they had a great handle on getting the word out on what’s happening. Between student-based promotions at local clubs such as Club Boca or Club 99/Aqua, there were big bright flyers all over the place for everything that went on. Dean Brown could take a cue or two from Jen Herzog, the former director of student affairs at Lynn. I know full well that activities are promoted most heavily to the social group most interested in the event itself but what about the rest of the student population? Those previously mentioned fashion shows were almost solely only promoted and represented to the cliques putting them on, in this case the minority sororities that conduct many events throughout the year. Much of what’s done is by word of mouth and in their own social cliques but there’s little other promotion done.
How will Brown combat this and make sure a real effort is given to spreading the word? Do we need event street teams? Do we need better promo materials? What about promotion outside the campus for commuter students (although, this is not the focal point of the new-found focus of Dean Brown’s vision)? Or better promotions at the places students frequent the most like the clubs and hookah bars around town? I don’t know what he has planned but I know the most forward-facing promotional venue he needs is staring him and every student and faculty member right in the face: MyFAU. Everyone has to use this portal during school sessions for everything from email to online classes so I hope he’s going to make better use of the free publicity. Or maybe he’ll have student affairs send email blasts to resident students about upcoming events. I know, it’d pretty much be spam but remember, people do read and respond to spam occasionally. Since we’re looking to start a club in the fall, any increased efforts that Brown and his department can or will make can only serve to help us and other clubs out that want to plan weekend activities.
FAU is going through its growing pains from a commuter-focused school to a more residential-focus school and that’s going to take some time to adjust to. When the largest portion of your students — and finances — are from off campus students, you have to make every dime worth it to get your residents to hang around. And there’s truly no limit to any possibility of activities to hold either: movie nights (either on campus or a quick jaunt over to Muvico or Sunrise Cinemas Mizner, both are roughly 5 minutes from campus), gaming competitions, MXC-style games, campus- or city-wide litter clean-up efforts, volunteer programs, fashion shows, speakers and panels on important and upcoming issues (these occur very often but they’re almost solely in the middle of the day during the week), art shows, plays, and so on. With 2500+ resident students and many more thousand commuters, the available options of what to do to keep us hanging around are in fact nearly infinite. I can’t count how many there’s been a speaker or panel on something interesting or salient that I wanted to attend but could not since they’re all during my work day. If some of these were shifted to the weekends, far more people would be willing to show up. And since there’s nearly no classes on Fridays, this is a pretty obvious time and place to put these events.
Tags: fau · school
